A female developer evangelist calls out a couple of misbehaving males for making sexist jokes at a conference, getting one of them fired. All hell breaks loose online. What lesson, if any, can we learn from this unsavory incident?

By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)

You’re minding your own business pursuing professional enlightenment at a tech conference when two dudes behind you break out the frat house humor and start making jokes about ‘big dongles.’ What do you do?

Ellen Pao’s lawsuit allows our community to discuss these “women in tech” issues as real problems.

By Cristina Cordova (Business Development, Pulse)

TechCrunch reported that Kleiner Perkins Partner Ellen Pao sued her firm for gender and sexual discrimination. A friend immediately told me “Well that’s career suicide” and I can’t say I didn’t think the same thing. While few can comment on whether the allegations are true, this news does highlight some of the reactions the media and tech community have had to gender issues in the past.

In a much discussed BBC Video about CES 2012, a booth babe tells the reporter “I don’t know any women [interested in tech]. I don’t know any women that would choose the tech world over shopping or cooking or taking care of kids.” Wait, is this really 2012?

Last week, tech and feminist blogs erupted with a startling story: Siri, the iPhone 4 app that responds to voice queries with pre-programmed or search-engine-based replies, refused to direct its users to abortion clinics.

Not only that: Apple’s Siri seems programmed to respond to sexual or sex-related questions almost invariably as if the user were a certain kind of cisgender man.

I run a small technology firm. We do business with a lot of larger technology companies. I meet plenty of women in senior positions. But it’s rare that I come across a female CEO. Why is that?

Look, I’m not surprised. I’m a guy. I know why.

Reason 1: One Friday night I picked up my teenage son at the movies along with four of his teenage friends. The ride home was filled with laughter, profanity, burps, flatulence and a few head slaps. It took a week for the smell to dissipate.